Originally posted on The Adventures of Scuba Jack. Reposted with permission.

It all started with a sponsored Pottery Barn Instagram post. I saw the Fillmore Stair Loft Bed, and I was a goner.

Until I saw that photo, I had been putting off making plans to move the girls into the same room. Aside from the daunting logistics of swapping two rooms (the current guest room will become the kids’ room, and Beatrice’s teeny room will become the guest room), I thought I should at least wait for Freja to go back to sleeping longer stretches at night.

However, I have not really slept since November. The girls have been passing colds back and forth to each other since then, and that germ soup combined with teething, rolling over, crawling, and babbling has landed Freja in our bed pretty much all night every night for months. And snot. Did I mention snot? So much snot. #nosefridaislife

When I saw that glorious beacon of loft bed heaven, I was totally primed to start envisioning life without a crib in my bedroom. I won’t delude myself into thinking that creating a shared girls’ bedroom will magically help Freja sleep all night by herself. Only time can help us there! Moving the crib out of our bedroom, however, will at least let me stop thinking about how useless that silly crib feels right now. And it will prevent me from breaking any more toes due to collisions between my unwieldy feet and the crib.

I immediately started planning how I could put the crib under the loft bed … and create a cozy reading nook in the other corner … and take the door off the closet and turn it into a dollhouse playspace. I even made myself a little before-and-after inspiration collage with pictures I found in the course of my “research.”

(Sources: potterybarnkids.com, petitandsmall.com, younghouselove.com)

Then I checked the PBK website for the price. Ugh, game over! The stair loft bed ALONE (without the bed underneath) was listed for $2399. Even if someone else offered to buy us the bed, I would send that money straight to the girls’ college funds. But, sigh, that is one beautiful bed.

I started prowling Facebook marketplace and craigslist for used options and, while a couple of listings were tempting (especially the IKEA Kura loft bed), nothing really had the built-in feel of the PBK bed with the flexibility to create different arrangements for the space underneath.

So, I decided that we will stick with Beatrice’s twin bed and our crib for now and just play around with the furniture arrangement in the room to see what works best.

In the midst of my obsessive (and failed) bed search, I actually came across a fantastically huge solid wood campaign dresser and shelving unit for FREE that I think will be perfect in the room now and will transition well as the girls get older. You can see the dresser portion in the photo below. I am in the process of disinfecting and prepping the whole unit for new paint and polishing the brass hardware, so I still feel like I’m making progress on Operation: Get the Crib Out of My Room.

I also found a beautiful 8×10 wool rug from RugsUSA during their Presidents’ Weekend Sale and used their online tool to try it with all the pieces of furniture that might be near the rug.

Eeeek, I can almost taste the freedom!

And that’s where things stand right now. I would love any feedback on how to make a shared infant and preschooler bedroom work, so please comment if you have suggestions! I will report back with the finished product … someday :-).